A cross-national comparison of the efficacy of community-based and national governance approaches on the protection of the African elephant

Carpenter, Stefan

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.10.025

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 42 publications

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“…If well implemented, community-based conservation efforts that combine wildlife conservation with material benefits to community members may improve both conservation status and reduce poverty 42,43 . Notable successes for elephant conservation include the example of Namibian conservancies where elephant poaching has been substantially reduced 44 , though impacts on poverty are mixed 41,45 , but these good examples should be read within a context of highly variable impacts on poaching in community-based natural resource management systems 46 . Our results support both community-based conservation projects where they provide genuine poverty-alleviation and increased involvement by conservation in more general poverty reduction schemes.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

African elephant poaching rates correlate with local poverty, national corruption and global ivory price

et al. 2019

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Poaching is contributing to rapid declines in elephant populations across Africa. Following high-profile changes in the political environment, the overall number of illegally killed elephants in Africa seems to be falling, but to evaluate potential conservation interventions we must understand the processes driving poaching rates at local and global scales. Here we show that annual poaching rates in 53 sites strongly correlate with proxies of ivory demand in the main Chinese markets, whereas between-country and between-site variation is strongly associated with indicators of corruption and poverty. Our analysis reveals a recent decline in annual poaching mortality rate from an estimated peak of over 10% in 2011 to <4% in 2017. Based on these findings, we suggest that continued investment in law enforcement could further reduce poaching, but is unlikely to succeed without action that simultaneously reduces ivory demand and tackles corruption and poverty.

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